India eyes $30 bn trade with ASEAN

Declaring that India was working on eliminating trade and investment barriers, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Tuesday advocated a trade turnover of $30 billion with ASEAN by year 2007 and establishment of a Free Trade Area with the ten-member regional grouping within a decade.

Seeking to partner ASEAN in the era of globalisation, he listed six strong points of the Indian economy, including a rich pool of English speaking human resource and the information technology revolution for enhancing India-ASEAN Trade and Investment.

"India is conscious of the new ASEAN members. We are offering unilateral tariff concessions on items of export interest to Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (lesser developed and newer entrants to ASEAN.)

"We are also seeking to incorporate an early harvest scheme to provide the incentive for a long-term engagement. If we proceed along this course, we can target a trade turnover of $30 billion by 2007 and a Free Trade Area within 10 years," Vajpayee told the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit in Bali.

Observing that India's trade and economic interaction with the ASEAN countries has been growing steadily, but not fast enough, Vajpayee said trade of less than $10 billion between the two did not do justice to the combined population of 1.5 billion people, producing a $1.5 trillion worth of goods and services annually.

Recalling his speech at the first India-ASEAN Business Summit a year ago for boosting business, Vajpayee said: "Our trade has since grown by about 25 per cent, but my comments remain valid."

The Business Summit was also addressed by Chinese and Japanese Prime Ministers Wen Jiabao and Junichiro Koizumi and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun.

ASEAN leaders plan EU-style group

Meanwhile, members of the Association of South East Asian Nations signed a significant pact aimed at cobbling together an economic band on the lines of the European Union to counter the rising strength of India and China.

The blueprint, called the Bali Concord II, envisages forming this economic group by 2020, and will lead to the elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers and the creation of a single market.